Merry Christmas, Alex Cross

CHAPTER 65

“Union Terminal is under attack,” I heard Captain Johnson yell into his radio after the first explosion. “Stop all incoming traffic. I repeat, shut all rail traffic in vicinity of-”

Another voice bellowed, “Man down!” I scrambled to my feet and looked out through the loading dock door. Special Agent Bobby Sparks was sprawled bleeding and unmoving between the rail tracks. Two of his men were already tending to him.

“Where the fuck is she?” Mahoney hissed at me just before the second blast went off, to our right, on the other side of the closest commuter train. A third explosion flashed and thundered off the top of one of the locomotives.

Out beyond Bobby Sparks and the men working on him, two HRT operators crouched and ran toward the latest explosion, automatic weapons leading. Three Amtrak police officers paralleled them, pistols drawn, leaving the rear platform, moving north onto the loading platform between the MARC trains.

I was looking at the fallen HRT leader, wondering where Hala could have thrown the grenade from, when Mahoney seemed to sense something. “Trap.”

“What?”

“Booby traps,” he said. “She’s drawing…” He shouted into his radio: “HRT, stand your-”

The hostage rescue operator closest to the commuter train broke a delicate fishing line and set off the fourth grenade. He was killed instantly, and his partner seriously wounded, a split second before the fifth bomb went off, between the two commuter trains where the Amtrak police officers had gone.